Saturday, January 17, 2009

Inside jokes - The French Crow

The French Crow was written because i wanted to change my msn nick from "je m'en fous. je ne veux que chier." to "I'm bored because I'm hard to pleased", and I wanted to write a story to incorporate the french that I had learnt from a friend, so that I won't forget it.

I had wanted to write a simple situation to contextualise the french words, but I was meaning to write a story about how mynahs - as i've noticed nowadays - were flying around in pairs. Like some kind of neighbourhood watch programme. Anyway, my mind and thoughts twitched around and then I chose to write on crow instead. Somehow, in my subconscious, there was also a lady in a red dress in the background. But she wasn't addressed and perhaps, it'll be explored in the mynah story that I might one day write.

Anyway, I think "The french crow" sounds nicer than "the french mynah". The french crow, sounds like something, the french knot, the french horn, the french man? I don't know. The mynah should be malay. The malay mynah - like the malay minah you know? I don't mean to offend. I would also write a story on the chinese pigs. Oh, in fact, I might have already. My pig stories: Sus, and Uncle Hock were both based on chinese characters in my head. Though I concede that is not obvious in the stories. Fine, i'll write one someday.

The first part of the story, waking up to be frightened by a crow - was based on a nightmare I had some years ago. I dreamt that I woke up, and there was a claymation kind of crow scaring the shit wits out of me. So, recalling that, I decided to write the story with that beginning, and see how it goes.

"Je m'en fous. Je ne veux que chier." (pronounced "jer mong foo. jer ner ver ker shi-eh.") means, "I don't care. I only want to shit." I decided to leave most people wondering what that means as it was not so important to translate it in the story, and will be funnier left as an insider joke, and rewarding for people who are reading sneak... so there you have it. It's funny also because that's what the crows do, on trees, they just don't care and just shit on the cars below. It's also a marvel how being on a tree full of crows, they don't shit on each other. I mean, the chances are there right?

Anyway, thanks to laysuan (also my kusudama friend) for teaching me, abeit reluctantly, the coolest bit of french that I know. Enculé (pronounced "on cue leh") is just too vulgar to spout all the time.

Crow in French is "corneille", according to the google translator. So happens, with a dictionary search that Corneille is also Pierre Corneille who is one of the great seventeenth century french playwright. So, I just named the crow "Pierre" (pronouced "Pee-air") which is a variant of the name "Peter". Peter the crow, a black bird, reminded me of the rhyme:
"2 little black birds sitting on a wall,
One named peter, the other named paul.
Fly away peter, fly away paul.
Come back peter, come back paul."
So, the left middle finger, we decided to name paul. It's cute like that.

The rest of the story was constructed on the go. I like it because it's spontaneous, and the story developed in a way that I didn't anticipate, so I was also surprised as I was writing it.

One of my accomplishments of the week is to name my middle fingers. What have you done, huh?

No comments: